New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters has drawn criticism from China’s ambassador after telling a lawmaker of Chinese descent to “go back to your own country” during a parliamentary debate.
The exchange took place on Wednesday during a discussion on New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when China-born Green Party lawmaker Lawrence Xu-Nan asked Peters, leader of the populist NZ First party, whether he had been vaccinated.
Peters responded by saying Xu-Nan had “come here five minutes ago.”
“Go back to your own country. That’s where they lie like a flatfish, but they don’t lie like that here,” Peters said.
“This is called a democracy, unlike what you’re used to. Go back to where you’ve come from, you loudmouth.”
The remarks prompted a rare response from Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong, who wrote on X on Thursday that while he preferred to stay out of domestic politics, “sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.”
Peters rejected the criticism, saying Wang’s comments had “proven my point.”
“We live in a democracy that includes free speech and rights — those two values that other certain countries not only limit, but do so with force,” Peters wrote on X.
